» Spears' spectacular week, chronologically: First, one of Spears' lawyers decides that the case isn't quite working out for him so far, and leaves. Next day, Spears loses the case, and hands the kids over to Federline. Well, not quite. Turns out she went batshit crazy--well, technically, more batshit crazy than before--held her kids hostage, went to the hospital and left with an invite to the Dr. Phil show. Remember when her biggest vice was just being real slutty on mars?

» Maybe rights don't need to be "managed" after all: Last week we saw Warner give in and start the no-DRM process. This week we see some action on the front of the last big holdout, Sony, with its history of destroying people's computers from the inside. Apparently the DRM cycle goes like this, for Sony, at least: 1. Ignoring objections, 2. Attacking consumers, 3. Understanding demand, 4. Understanding supply. In this whirlwind week Sony went from step 2 all the way to 4! It realized that consumers might like to move WMA's to their iPods, then went and got its collective 14 year old son and had him teach them how to do that. Then, the exciting part, Sony--in the same week, no less!--agreed to give some mp3's away on Amazon, DRM-free, and move forward, INTO THE FUTURE.

» & more about the Future of music distribution, in short: Jay-Z has been reportedly confirmed to be on track to start a label with Apple (& hotels too, but not with Apple); EU bands together for uniform DRM scheme; Two state U's in the Pacific Northwest will not forward RIAA "I hate you" letters to students; Wired on how the DRM-shift might change things at Apple; Canadian labels aren't feeling so much the proposed aw-hell-just-tax-all-connections approach to copyright law; Another antitrust lawsuit filed against Apple; Keen reporting: People don't buy CD's so much anymore, People like to buy music on the personal computer; NIN's Trent Reznor lets you in on the numerical side of an In Rainbows-type approach; Hot Chip, Atmosphere, and Big Head Todd all want to pull a Radiohead with the free album thing.

» Tangentially-related sex stories (progressively less related), in short: For whatever reason, these seemed popular this week. NME reports the death of BBC Radio 1 DJ by, according to their headline, a "sex and drugs binge" then goes on to mention lots of drugs and nothing about sex, apparently just assuming the "sex" part; The always interesting Regina Lynn interviews the founder of Deaf Bunny, a producer of porn specifically aimed at the deaf;  Elite chessnerd David Levy predicts sex with humanoid robots in the near future, in an article with a name similar to that of a brilliant Bent record, Programmed for Love; And lastly, and admittedly unrelated to anything: Ape whores. Nay, Pretty ape whores.

» The Rest, in short: One of Snoop's long-forgotten children wants in on Snoop's new reality show (turns out Snoop wasn't fucking around when he said he was a Pimp, or, ...er, was fucking around); You can look forward to multiple handfuls of Van The Man (Morrison) reissues; More Flight of the Conchords on the way, yesplz;  Stephen Stills recovers from Cancer surgery; Tying the knot behind the cell: Winehouse renews vows; Hammerpants in going to the web, with videos; Oberst & Tweedy play for Obama.